Aussie Cannes juror claims he was not allowed to call out scam
The executive creative director of Innocean Worldwide Australia has claimed jurors were not allowed to call out entries they felt may have been scam during the judging process at this year’s Cannes Lions festival, and said organisers put pressure on his jury to elevate work.
Dave King, a veteran of M&C Saatchi and Whybin\TBWA, spent the week judging on the Direct Jury at Cannes, voicing his concerns in a column for Campaign Brief.
King wrote that the jury was not allowed to call out scam, but that he had suspicions about a lot of work entered, and noted his particular disgust at the Bronze Lion-winning I Sea app created by Grey Singapore, which has been deleted from the Apple Store and denounced by the client.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFeHQ2YQTqY
Himself a winner of more than a dozen Lions, King slammed agencies willing to scam their way to awards on the back of human tragedy.
“We weren’t allowed to call ‘scam’ but my radar was going off constantly,” King wrote.
“And the repugnant thing was most of the scam work was taking advantage of tragedy, following death or chaos. Like the miserable people who developed the I Sea app, there was a lot of dodgy work for charities.
“I had to call one as the case video was impeccable but so clearly didn’t happen. It was also a case of one of the judges putting it forward for another member of the panel. Sadly, that shit and block-voting still happens, but you probably knew that.”
King also questioned the workload faced by jurors as the they whittled down 2,000 entries to just handful, with just 2.4% receiving awards at the end. Initial entries had been culled from more than 3,000 in a bid to make the juror’s workload more manageable.
“That number would have been even lower had we not been ‘encouraged’ to bump work up,” King said, noting organisers dubbed the jury the “toughest Direct Jury in the history of Cannes”.
Grey Group Asia Pacific has remained silent since it won Bronze. The app was removed from Apple’s App store after technology experts claimed it to be fake, while the supposed client, the Migration Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) told British IT title The Register it had not been involved in the creation of the app.
In statement, MOAS said it had cut all ties with the agencies.
“As a global NGO that rescues people at sea, we are approached by countless number of companies and innovators who would like to contribute to our cause,” MOAS said, in a statement.
“We make it a point to try and give advice according to our own experience in the field of search-and-rescue and in line with our humanitarian principles.”
It said when approached by Grey it had been told the app would use real-time images.
“We were dismayed to discover that real-time images were not being used. We have since discontinued our relationship with Grey for Good and spoken candidly about our disappointment to the media.”
topics
Cannes
Dave King
Grey Group Asia Pacific
Grey Singapore
I Sea
Innocean
M&C Saatchi
MOAS
scam advertising
Whybin/TBWA
The whole awards very-go-round is really in a very sad state. When the world’s biggest agencies operate on the basis that the main game is winning awards (and now in particular that means Cannes Lions as a KPI) rather than the job they are asked to do by their clients- to sell product or a service, (and in so doing, to find the best creative solution to that marketing problem)- it’s a huge problem and regrettably an endemic issue. It encourages the kind of scamming we have all witnessed and known about for yerars, but it’s reached new hightened levels in recent years, with charities being the main ‘food’ to feed the agency networks’ hunger for Cannes glory. And as this case proves, at all costs. Grey are not alone in this endeavour. The pressure is on most ECD’s from their respective networks overseas. I have worked in big agencies, and seen this kind of pressure, as we all have. But luckily I wasn’t a party to it, and in my experience, especially at Clemenger under ECD David Blackley, awards were important to win for obvious reasons, but not the main game. The same went for my time at Grey Melbourne working on the TAC account with CD Nigel Dawson. Road safety was paramount and the only pressure was to create campaigns in the most effective, creative way possible to reduce the road toll. Awards were a ‘nice to have’ side benefit. And I’d be lying if I said they weren’t nice to have- they were. But they seem to have taken over. I honestly got more pleasure knowing the work I contributed to on the TAC account, actually contributed to saving real lives, and was seen by real audiences, than from a glitzy, shiny Lion sitting on the shelf behind me.
The last time I went to Cannes in 2013, I was taken aback by the increase in categories to be awarded which seemed to have grown at a rate faster than the Stig doing a quick lap on Top Gear.
In my humble opinion, the balance needs to be restored because it’s what we really do as an industry that counts, not the sideshow. And it needs to start with the big agency networks. The genie has gotten out of control- the question is, can we ever get it back into the bottle.
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Scam creative has been a blight on the industry for years. Just like media agency kick backs and rebates and lack of transparency is now. The sad part is that the industry wide conflict of interests between agencies who enter the awards, award show operators running a business for profit and the increasing number of advertisers attending The Award Festival to ‘share’ in the awards and celebrations are all supporting this state of affairs. Unless we address the conflicts and makes the changes needed, nothing will change. And it is not the answer to either ignore it and hope it goes away or to shoot the whistle-blowers. They are usually just frustrated at the lack of progress for an industry they love.
While I don’t think Dave King ever intended these comments to be a lead story on this site, I know that many creatives and judges feel exactly the same way but don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them by speaking up.
Looking at the number of entries that were so clearly created to ‘solve’ a third world disease or condition it disgusts me as well. Grey network seem to have really upped their number of entries and it’s brilliant they have been called on one of them. I applaud mumbrella’s stance on exposing this cynical chasing of awards for fake work, but it’s sadly never going to change, there’s too much at stake for the winners, networks, and now, even clients.
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